At The Office
by Moon Faery
Summary: When Duo looses his job because of Heero (again), Zechs makes him an offer her can't refuse: work at the Preventors. It might even be the best job he's ever had... If he lives through his first day of work, that is. YAOI; 1x2x1; 3x4x5 & one Living Cafeter


At The Office 1/1  
  
Rating: R  
  
Series: Gundam Wing  
  
Genre: Humor/General  
  
Pairings: 1x2x1; 3x5x4 (Yeah, yeah. I know, I know.)  
  
Spoilers: o.o? (shrugs)  
  
Warnings: Yaoi; Language; Humor  
  
By Moon Faery  
  
Archived: Moon Faery's Garden (http://www.angelfire.com/anime4/moon_faerys_garden/); Kiss of Death (http://www.angelfire.com/gundam/kissofdeath/); Lev's Lair (http://www.gwaddiction.com/levlair/)  
  
Disclaimer: A statement created solely to save one's ass from becoming lawn for the proverbial legal mower. I do not own Gundam Wing. All materials are used without the permission of their various owners. However, this story line, all original characters and just about anything else non-GW is mine. (Holds fic close to her.) Grrrr.... The lines and the idea, however, are DLC's, thankies to the challenge. ^~  
  
Author Notes: Umm... Yeah. ;; Don't expect much in the way of artistic intergrity here, people. It ran away with the chicken salad I tried to make last week. I managed to fit all the lines in, though. ^_^ Be afraid. Bwahahahaaaa!!!! HEAVY EMPHASIS; *light emphasis*; 'thoughts'.   
  
***  
  
"MAXWELL!"  
  
"SHIT!" Duo banged himself on the knuckles with a wrench as his boss stormed into the garage, flushed with anger. Tagging along behind her was a tall blonde man with hair down to his waist. Duo blinked and squinted, forgetting his scraped knuckles. With his hand covering one eye (the eye that was showing was an impressive shiner) and a large part of his forehead, the man looked almost exactly like Zechs Merquise.  
  
Then the man covered his other eye too and Duo was sure. "A Zechs impersonator?" he looked closer. "A bad one, too."  
  
Zechs tilted his chin upwards to the roof and sighed. "I should have known." He looked back down and glared at Duo. "I'm the real Zechs, you nitwit."  
  
The ex-God of Death shrugged it off. "That's what they all say."  
  
"Maxwell!" Duo's diminutive redheaded boss stormed up and stared him straight in the solar plexus. "Do you know what you're goddamned boyfriend did to Mr. Peacecraft here?"  
  
Duo winced. "Does it have anything to do with his black eye?" he asked, already knowing the answer and not liking it.  
  
"And the other one, the split lip *and* the broken wrist!" she screamed pissily, shaking a fist under Duo's nose.  
  
"Sprained," Zech's corrected helpfully.  
  
Barbara, the boss, glared at him. "Stay out of this, you!" Looking around, she grabbed a footstool with her ankle and hauled it over to where she was standing, using it to get into Duo's face. "Not to mention the warnings he posted on the employee lounge walls! I've HAD it with your jealous boyfriend beating up my customers, Maxwell! You're FIRED! Do you hear me?! FUCKING FIRED!!!!" Her face turned so red that it matched her hair, and she had to step down off the stool before she got too dizzy.  
  
There was a moment when Duo just blinked at her in shock. Then his face screwed up in a frown of concentration and he started ticking something off on his fingers. "Waiter... stripper... typist... delivery boy... cabbie... cop... mechanic..." His frown got even deeper. "That's seven jobs. Not good."  
  
Barbara gritted her teeth. "Yeah? Well tell that to your asshole boyfriend at home! Now OUT! I don't want to see your ass EVER a-FUCKING-gain!"  
  
Duo tossed down the wrench and grinned at her. "You never did see it, or you'd be joining the list of the injured."  
  
"OUT!!!!" The redhead was actually starting to have trouble breathing.  
  
The ex-pilot acessed the situation and decided he could get one last good one in before she called the cops. "Look at it this way; at least I didn't file sexual harassment charges against you."  
  
Her eyes bulged out, and for a second Duo was afraid that he'd given her a heart-attack. He didn't even take time to strip out of his greasy work-apron; he ran. Duo Maxwell hadn't run from anyone in a long time, but a record wasn't worth taking a shot from the sawed-off double-barrel shotgun he KNEW Barbara kept in her office. Zechs followed at a trot, cradling his injured wrist as he escaped from the angry woman. He knew insanity when he saw it.  
  
When they finally slowed down, they were outside an old-fashioned pizza parlor, and Barbara was a memory that was still faintly audible over the blocks seperating them. Somewhere along the way, Duo had dumped his work apron. Their eyes met over the aroma of cooking pepperoni and they shrugged in silent agreement. Fifteen minutes later they were seated around a table, sipping their drinks and awaiting the arrival of a half-anchovi half-pinapple pizza..  
  
"So Heero belted you a couple?" Duo asked casually, lounging back in his chair and sucking down a mouthful of sweet tea, all the grease on his hands having been washed off. "There's a club, you know."  
  
"So I understand," Zech's replied, sipping on his soda. "He's the possesive type?"  
  
Duo rolled his eyes. "So much that I don't know how I live with it."  
  
Zechs sighed and raised his glass. "I know what you mean."  
  
They clinked their glasses together. "So, who's yours?"  
  
"Noin." For a moment, Zechs wished that the parlor sold alcohol. "She actually threatened Lady Une with dismemberment if she didn't give me a looser fitting uniform."  
  
"It's the hair," Duo told him, pulling his braid around an petting it as the pizza arrived. "Drives them wild."  
  
A nod of total agreement and several slices of pizza later, they were sharing stories of their jealous lovers like old friends.  
  
"And then Noin ripped her shirt off and told me to tell her who was bigger!" Zech's laughed. "And she expected me to be honest about it!"  
  
"Well, were you?" Duo asked, trying not to choke on his pizza.  
  
"And get myself gutted?" Zechs asked seriously. "Of course not! I told her she was bigger and got laid for my trouble."  
  
Duo nodded his understanding and set down his food. "What is it that makes them try to ruin what they've got?" he asked rhetorically. "It's like... 'If the shoe fits-'"  
  
"'Throw it out the window'," Zechs finished, grimacing. "I'm sorry about getting you fired; I didn't even know you worked at the garage when I told your boss about Heero slugging me."  
  
"Just another one of those damned coincidences that I keep running into head-on." Duo sighed and slammed back another glass of tea.  
  
"So was that really job seven?" One blonde eyebrow rose as Zechs eyed Duo over his glass.  
  
"Yep. Heero keeps assaulting either the customers or the employees and I keep loosing my job." There was no way Duo could have sunk any lower into his chair, never mind that it was tipped back on two legs. "Even the police weren't safe from him. I didn't even make it through acadamy before I was tossed out, and no one else was going to hire a seventeen year-old college graduate with no birth certificate or other proof of exsistence for anything more than basic wages."  
  
"Have you tried the Preventors?"  
  
Duo's chair fell over backwards with a loud clatter. "You're joking!"  
  
Zechs shrugged expressively while Duo righted his chair. "Considering your past, I'm sure we could work around the proof of exsistence. Also, every Preventor is trained in self-defense, from typists up to full agents, and most of them carry loaded weapons. If any group is safe from Heero, it's them."  
  
There was a moment of shocked silence while Duo contemplated it. "You're right... And Heero already works there, so we'd loose the double commute too."  
  
Zechs nodded. "Not to mention that an ex-Gundam pilot would hardly have to go through the regular training programs; we already KNOW that you're capable of anything we ask you to do, and probably a few things we wouldn't." He shrugged again. "And you'd be in good company. We just convince Quatre, Trowa AND Wufei to join."  
  
Duo was nodding to himself, weighing the pros and cons. The pros had it. "Is this a job offer?"  
  
"Do you want it to be?" Zechs sat up in his chair. "As assistant director, I have the power to hire you as a full agent." He winked. "That is, if you want it." He held out a hand, which Duo gratefully grabbed and shook.  
  
"Sign me up!"  
  
***  
  
"Tis the plague of the sour apple rings!" Duo snarled, walking out of Lady Une's office with his uniforms, manual, company calendar and lover in hand. Behind him tagged the other three recruits in numerical order. Quatre was looking rather shaken from the over load of information they had just gone through, while Trowa and Wufei were just trying not to think about it. Together, the infamous group headed towards the company cafeteria for their first meal as co-workers.  
  
"Duo, it was just candy," Heero told him. "I warned you that Une loves the things."  
  
"But did they have to be *apple*?" the newly-made agent whined. "Couldn't they be... I don't know, peach or something? I hate the apple ones!"  
  
"Get used to them; Une passes out bags to everyone on Halloween, Christmas and New Years," Heero advised, glaring at a random passer-by who happened to be reading a clock over Duo's head. Duo just groaned.  
  
"They roll each other up in carpets?" Quatre asked in a broken voice, looking down at the uniforms in his arms dubiously as he finally came out of his stupor. "What OTHER kinks do they have, Heero?"  
  
Heero shrugged in what must have been a Preventor-issue guesture, since it matched Zechs' previous ones. "I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."  
  
Quatre just stared, jaw dropping open a few inches.  
  
Trowa patted Quatre's shoulder from behind, jugging his own load. "It's all right, Quatre. Une was joking; they don't really do that." Green eyes widened. "I think."  
  
"You THINK?" Wufei exploded, staring at Heero and Duo with unveiled eyes. "Just what the hell *do* you people do to agents to make them so damned kinky?!"  
  
Duo pointed at his lover. "Ask him; I just joined."  
  
"But you've been reaping the benefits for at least six months," Trowa told him. "You probably know something."  
  
Heero looked mildly affronted. "What makes you think the Preventors are kinky?"  
  
"I stayed in that apartment you share with Maxwell," Wuefi told him in no uncertain terms. "I lived, ate and slept there while I was looking for one of my own. You no *not* want to know what I heard coming through those walls!"  
  
A single blush painted Heero and Duo's faces, starting at Duo's hairline and traveling down his arm to where his hand held Heero's, from there traveling up to Heero's hairline.  
  
Finally Duo managed to pull himself together. "You're right. We don't."  
  
There was a long moment of uncomfortable silence before Duo broke it. "Moving onto someone else's sex life... Quatre!" The blonde jumped and started lookig around for an exit. "Why'd you join?"  
  
Quatre mumbled something that sounded like, "Milksters were mumble into 'nnmble Relena SHIP!'"  
  
Duo, Heero and several people down the hall stopped to stare at him. "Come again?" Duo managed.  
  
Blue-green eyes peeked up from staring at the pile of Preventors good in his arms, and Quatre blushed. "My sisters kept trying to set me up in a 'normal relationship'," he clarified sheepishly. "This gives me a chance to get away from them."  
  
"Catherine tried the same thing," Trowa told the blonde soothingly, patting his shoulder again. "She gave up when I told her that I was straight."  
  
"You're straight?" Wufei asked, looking exceptionally put out for someone with no stake in the conversation. "That's not in the Gundam Pilots handbook." Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a small book with all five Gundam on the cover, under the print "How to Pilot a Gundam and Win Legions of Adoring Female Fans". "Chapter three, paragraph five, sentence seventeen: 'All pilots must meet the regulation codes on page fifty-three regarding dress, hair, homocidal vindictiveness, sexuality and libido.' And on page fifty-three it says that homosexuality or bisexuality is mandatory. So you CAN'T be straight!"  
  
Trowa's placid face twisted into a slight grin and he winked. "Catherine didn't need to know that."  
  
Duo swiped the book out of Wufei's hands. "Where'd you get this thing?"  
  
"Standard issue when I got Nataku."  
  
"Wufei!" Quatre interupted, not sure he wanted to hear anymore about Wufei's handbook. "Why are you in Preventors?"  
  
"Being a hermit was dull, so I decided to be miserable in company rather than alone."  
  
The other four pilots stopped to stare at Wufei, blinking. While Duo was distracted, the Chinese boy stole back his handbook and continued walking. After a few steps, Wufei noticed that his companions had stopped and turned around to face them, turning red. "What? It's a perfectly logical reason!"  
  
"What about you, Duo?" the blonde one asked hastily, not liking the way Wufei's hands were starting to flex.  
  
Duo shrugged. "It's the only job I can get where Heero won't scare the employees."  
  
This time everybody stared at Heero, who just raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"  
  
They all fidgeted, but finally Quatre decided to take the bullet for his friends. Besides, he was in the middle of a week-long monopoly game with Wufei, and facing Yuy's wrath should at least have been worth Park Place and Tenessee Avenue. "Heero... Duo loves you but everyone else thinks you're an asshole." Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes and waited for the blow.  
  
Heero stared at him, the shrugged. "I can accept that."  
  
Even Duo twitched.  
  
The silence stretched on uncomfortably, since no one wanted to risk Heero's wrath by commenting. Finally Trowa, of all people, pointed and yelled, "Look, an Aries!"  
  
While Heero was looking, his three companions and lover managed to dodge into a men's bathroom and lock the door.   
  
Quatre leaned against the door and panted, having finished prying up a toilet and using it to block the entrance. Why there wasn't water everywhere... No one will ever know. "When do you think he'll notice we're gone?"  
  
The former pilot of Dethscythe glanced at the clock. "Three seconds as of... now."  
  
Trowa raised an eyebrow.  
  
"He notices his hormone level falling when I'm out of the room," Duo explained, just as a "hn" of outrage came through the door.  
  
The other three barely had time to blanch before Heero was pounding on the door. "Get your asses back out here NOW!"  
  
Before Heero could ram his shoulder into the door again, Duo shoved Quatre into a stall. "We need an excuse! Get changed!" he hissed, picking up the blonde's uniform from the pile of their supplies on the floor and throwing them at him. Trowa and Wufei followed his advice too, vanishing into the handicaped stall. Heero's lap-attachment stepped into his own stall to get dressed, missing the fact that there were five sets of feet in the bathroom, and Heero was still outside.  
  
After several moments of struggling sounds, interspersed with Heero's regular thumps and curses, someone slumped against the stall door loudly. Trowa's voice whimpered breathelessly from his shared stall with Wufei. "My pantaloons don't fit!"  
  
Someone flushed and stepped out of their stall. "I can honestly say that I never expected to hear those words out of the mouth of the esteemed Mr. Barton," Zechs joked.  
  
"Stop being an ass, Zec- Zechs?" Duo poked his head out of his stall, half clothed and gaping.  
  
"ZECHS! Get the hell away from my boyfriend!" Heero yelled through the door, peeking through a large crack he'd managed to make in the door.  
  
"Ah, Heero!" Zechs grined urbanely and bowed at the pissy Japanese boy. "This your squaw?" he asked stiltedly, waving a hand at Duo, who slammed himself back into the bathroom.   
  
Quatre, unable to resist the temptation, poked his own head out and leered at his blonde superior officer. "Many hottie squaws here."  
  
The former Lightning Count frowned. "I ain't no squaw!"  
  
There was a dual thud as Heero pushed the door open at the same time Trowa landed flat on his back on the ceramic tile of the bathroom. Trowa didn't seem to care much; he was much too busy trying to see how far down Wufei's throat he could get his tongue before Wufei choked.  
  
For anyone interested, it turned out to be pretty damned far.  
  
Heero stepped over Wufei's leg, which had escaped the confines of the stall, and stepped over to Duo's hiding pace. "Duo! Out! Now."  
  
The violet-eyed agent poked his head out the door again. "Don't you care that Trowa looks like he needs the CPR Wufei's giving him?" he asked nervously. "Maybe enough to not do what I think you're going to do? Or at least not in public?"  
  
Heero's long months at the Preventor's had hardened him to all but the weirdest of occurences, so his reply didn't require much thought. "Not really." While he was pushing Duo back into the stall to show him exactly why he wasn't interested in Trowa and Wufei, a nearly naked Quatre crept by behind him looking intent on something unnameable and probably disgusting. Heero slammed the stall door before turning around, or even his unshakable nerves probably would have been shaken.  
  
Zechs was quickly starting to loose his less than legendary patience. "Wait a minute. Trowa is with Wufei. And what does Quatre think about that?!!?" he demanded, stamping his foot like a three year-old demanding a cookie. Moments like these when no one paid any attention to him were what drove him to try and blow up the planet in the first place!  
  
There were several muffled thumps, and Duo poked his head back out the stall door, even more undressed than he'd been moments before. Before he could say anything, Heero hauled him back into the stall and stuck his head out to take in the situation for himself. "I think he's about to crawl between them."  
  
Zechs blinked and turned just in time to stare, slack-jawed, as Quatre's feet vanished under the door of Wufei and Trowa's stall.  
  
Then and there he vowed never to hire anymore barely adult, overly horny former Gunam pilots EVER again. Not that there were any left to hire, but it was the thought that counted.  
  
***  
  
"Sucking leads to sucess."  
  
"Wufei, we've had this argument three times before," Quatre sighed, trying to button his collar up high enough that it his his brand-new hickies. "That only works for people who prefer being on bottom."  
  
Duo sighed and tried to concentrate on hiding his limp, while Trowa held open the cafeteria door for the other four agents. Trowa, amazingly, was the only one who didn't look like he'd spent the last half-hour having sex in a bathroom stall, never mind that he and Wufei were the ones who started it.  
  
Incidentally, Quatre's slacks fit him much better than his own did, and Quatre didn't mind wearing his pants a little long in the leg.  
  
Wufei crossed his arms smuggly. "Then why does it work so well for me?"  
  
"I think that it should be obvious, Wufei," Heero told him, slapping the Chinese boy on the shoulder as he passed. Wufei was still too high on his post-coital bliss to notice what Heero meant.  
  
"Ah, boys!" Une wandered over, holding a tray of something unitentifiable. "I was wondering where you got off to."  
  
Trowa and Wufei managed to maintain their 'cat in the cream' expressions while Quatre and Duo choked and Heero actually blushed. "I was showing them the facilities."  
  
"Good, good," Une nodded, sweeping her eyes over her newest agents. "How are you holding up so far?"  
  
Everyone nodded except Quatre, who was tilting his head to the side and peering anxiously at Une's tray. "Is that supposed to be food?"  
  
The commander blinked, then looked down at her lunch, which consisted of a pile of crackers and a plate of something that was almost gelatinous in consistency with slightly furry bits strewn throughout the meal. "Yes."  
  
Meanwhile, Trowa was also eyeing Une's food, taking in the brilliant blue and red shades. "Is it supposed to be that color?"  
  
"Also yes."  
  
The blonde twitched and turned an interesting shade of green. "Is it even edible?"  
  
Une nodded. "Pretty much. If it doesn't move, pick it up and spread it on a cracker." One of the furry things on her tray twitched and made a squeaking noise. Without even looking, OZ's former Lady picked up her plastic knife and stabbed it, pulling the now dying entree off her plate and holding it up as it spazmed in its death throes. "See? That doesn't go on the cracker." Then she wiped it off on one side of her tray, which already contained two other dead pieces of lunch.  
  
Heero, who'd been a Preventer the longest, took it in stride, but the other four stepped back from the substence.  
  
"I'll take my chances with toxic waste, thanks," Duo quipped, jumping as the dying piece of food seemed to reach for him.  
  
"It IS toxic waste," Wufei hissed in the braided boy's ear.  
  
"Shut up or they might make us eat it," Duo whispered back, still keeping an eye on the now-dead thing.  
  
A definitely female laugh sounded out. Relena sauntered up, dressed in her Colonies-Earth Ambassadorial best, complete with a nametag that identified her and her recently aquired position. "The food isn't this bad all the time," she assured them, adjusting a few tendrils of her chin-length blonde tresses. "It's the cook's Time Of The Month, and worse, it's a Monday," she said, as if that explained everything.  
  
The only other female of the group, Une, nodded wisely, while the five pitifully ignorant males just stood there looking stupid.  
  
Relena's shoulders dropped slightly. "Don't any of you know anything about women?" she asked, frustrated.  
  
In unison, they all shook their heads negative.  
  
"I'm starting to see why you're all gay," the blonde girl muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Quatre, what about you? Don't you have twenty-something older sisters? You must have picked up SOMETHING!"  
  
The ex-pilot of Sandrock managed to look horified. "You don't think I actually spent TIME with them, do you?" he asked, still looking faintly ill from Une's lunch. "I spent most of my childhood hiding from them, and by the time I could defend myself, they all had already moved out of the house!"  
  
"Trowa? Wufei?" Relena asked, looking desperate. "Heero?"  
  
Trowa shrugged. "Nope."  
  
Wufei looked indignant. "I was married, that doesn't mean I paid attention!"  
  
Heero just shook his head and wisely kept his mouth shut.  
  
Une raised an eyebrow. "Duo? You have excellent people skills. Perhaps..?"  
  
The last male in the group grimace and shook his head. "Sorry, all I know is that when you see them wearing loose clothing and eating chocolate, it's time to run for the hills."  
  
Quatre, the only other one with even the slightest knowledge of women, nodded his agreement with this policy.  
  
"Of all the damned days to visit the Preventors..." Relena sighed, looking like she was fighting off a massive headache. "They should teach this in school. Okay boys, lesson one. Duo already knows this one. When a woman's on her period, she's dangerous and imbeciles should avoid her at all costs." She pointed one blue-polished nail at them. "That means all of you."  
  
They didn't even have the decency to argue.  
  
"Good boys. Second lesson: When the woman in control of the cafeteria is on her period, bring a sack lunch." Relena held up her own brown baged food and jiggled it in demonstration. "She's only radioactive on Thursdays and Mondays. Therefore, on Mondays and Thursdays that are Period days, males should avoid the cafeteria entirely." This time, she pointed at the line of workers in white aprons who were visible through the kitchen door window trying to unlock the door and escape. "You don't want to end up like those poor saps." Quatre raised a hand in the air tentatively. "Yes, Quatre?"  
  
"Umm... Why Thursdays and Mondays?"  
  
This was going to be harder than she thought. "Have you ever gotten up on a Monday, absolutely miserable because you had to go to work after two whole days of rest?" When he nodded, Relena continued. "Okay, now add that feeling to bloating, cramps, a headache, being tired, feeling slightly homocidal already and having to cary an extra set of panties in case your pad bunches up and moves."  
  
Quatre was starting to look sick again, but Relena continued ruthlessly. "Now, on Thursday, think of all of that, plus a week of going to work in SPITE of it and the potential of missing a perfectly good weekend of rest and fun just because your body is against you."  
  
All five of them blanched.  
  
Une had to throw in her two cents. "Don't forget the special problem of having people take everything you go through to cook them meals for granted, day after day, all of it coming down to one week a month of pure misery."  
  
Relena clicked her tongue. "And it's a well known fact that women who live together or work together all tend to have their cycles at the same time, and shared misery is misery multiplied, which only makes the whole thing worse."  
  
It didn't take much looking around the cafeteria for the boys to realize that at least three-quarers of the room's population was female. Stonger men than they had broken at far less. With Duo leading the way, the group of teenage boys started backing out of the cafeteria, keeping one eye on Relena and the other on the kicthen door.  
  
"What, leaving so soon?" Une asked, trying to look sympathetic and failing misreably. "So eager to get working; that's what I like to see in my minions- I mean, agents. Here!" Without warning, she shoved her lunch tray at Trowa, who grabbed it reflexively. "Take this with you! Wouldn't want my best agents to wither away, now would I?"  
  
The food on the tray pulsated, as if it wasn't sure about its new owner. That was all it took; the five boys turned around and ran out the swinging cafeteria doors, Trowa unconciously clutching his "lunch". Behind them, Une and Relena were clutching their stomachs, not even trying to hold in their laughter.  
  
Men were so easy to tease.  
  
***  
  
After their escape from the cafeteria, the boys broke up into groups. Heero and Duo vanished down a hallway to find somewhere private while Trowa, Quatre and Wufei walked down to the personnel office to fill out their insurance, tax and other forms, Trowa petting his lunch as he walked, which rippled softly in appreciation.  
  
"I can't believe you're touching that thing," Quatre told him, wrinkling his nose in disgust.  
  
"It's warm and shiny and it squishes between my fingers," Trowa explained softly, scratching his food under something that vaguely resembled a chin. It burbled and purred, solidifying into a gelatinous mound in the center of the tray.  
  
"You better hope it's housebroken," Wufei warned him as they stepped into the Personnel Office. "If you're not careful, it'll probably eat your drapes and tear the furniture to shreds."  
  
"Ah, Mr. Winner, Mr. Barton, Mr. Chang and the Monday Special, I presume?" Behind the desk, a secretary stood up and shook all their hands, pausing to pat Trowa's new pet on the top of it's mound. "I've been expecting you. But where are Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Yuy?"  
  
"Looking for the closet nearest to their office," Quatre explained pleasantly. "Probably to try out their equipment in a new enviroment." The blonde, who wasn't quite so little any more but still managed to be the shortest of the group, smiled. "They claimed that they had already finished most of their forms."  
  
The secretary, a tiny woman with dark green hair and pink highlights, nodded. "And they have finished most of it, but it recently came to my attention that they're cohabitating, and I need them to fill out a few things." Without looking, the woman pulled three reams of paper off her desk and handed them to Qutare. "If you could just be sure that they get these, please."  
  
While the blonde tried to adjust his new load, Wufei chuckled. "That tiny stack? Is it supposed to be that small?" he joked, unconciously petting Trowa's food.  
  
The secretary, who's nametag said Jake, looked again. "Oh, I'm sorry! Those are the forms for owning a company goldfish!" She turned around and vanished into a back room, reappearing almost immediately with a large wheelbarrow of paperwork. "They can come back for the rest after they've finished these."  
  
Quatre's hands were shaking as he sat down the reams and took possesion of the barrow. "Heero's going to kill someone for this," he muttered, sending up a silent prayer that it wouldn't be anyone he knew.  
  
Jake smiled brightly. "Now for your paperwork," she chirped before starting to root around under the desk.  
  
Wufei went pale. 'If this is what Maxwell and Yuy get after finishing theirs, what will we get for not having started?' He exchanged a glance and a half with Trowa, who was looking just as worried.  
  
When Jake popped out from under her desk, all four of them were starting to feel the worry. When they were handed four pieces of paper total, the lunch jiggled in relief.  
  
"Each of you gets one of these, and Mr. Barton also gets a Pets and Dependent form, providing for your Monday Special should you become incapacitated. Sign here, here, here and there and place a sludge-print here for the record, please."  
  
As they signed, the lunch crept up and left a slimy imprint on one of Trowa's papers where it was indicated.  
  
"Alright!" Jake clapped her ahdns and took the forms back. "You're all done!"  
  
"That's it?" Wufei asked, shocked. "Sho-" The asian boy paused, remembering what happened last time he questioned the secretary and didn't finish his sentence.  
  
"Not quite. Here's your company issue bumper stickers." Without even blinking, the now officially scary woman handed them each bumper stickers reading, "Jesus saves but does he invest wisely?" Then she grinned. "That's it! Have a good day! See you boys for your retirement paperwork!" Jake ushered them out of the office, putting up an "out to lunch" sign and hurrying off while they were still in shock. They barely recovered their wits enough to wander back towards Duo and Heero's office, which was right across the hall from their own.  
  
The first thing they noticed was a bright and shiny new doorknob on Heero and Duo's office. The second thing was that although the door appeared to be fitted with new, two-way locks as well, it was open. The third, and final, was the odd conversation coming from withing said office.  
  
"This bra is wireless! Does that make it cellular?" Heero's voice sounded extremely confused.  
  
"I think it's satelite, Heero. Like this." There was a brief struggling sound. "And then you press this thing." There was a popping noise.  
  
"Do women actually wear these things?"  
  
"I think that's why they're so dangerous. That and they travel in packs."  
  
"What do we need a bra for, anyways?"  
  
Trowa and Wufei looked at each other, holding a silent argument over whether they should interupt or not. Quatre just glared at them both and pushed his wheelbarrow through the door.  
  
"It's part of the disguise closet, who kno- Hey, Winner!" Duo waved. "Would you look at some of the supplies they gave us? Everything from bullets to water balloons! We've even got some costumes."  
  
Quatre ignored it, too occupied with the way his arms were aching after pushing a wheelbarrow across the building. "I was told to give you this," he said unceremoniously, dumping the load of paper on their carpet. The barrow squealed in protest and broke off at the wheel. The blonde turned pale. "Oops, I broke it!"  
  
All five stared at the broken wheelbarrow, but Wufei was the first to speak. "You broke it, how did you break it?"  
  
Quatre shrugged helplessly, nudging the wheel with his foot. "It just sorta snapped off..."  
  
"I don't think Jake's going to like this," Trowa muttered, pulling a piece of his uniform away from the glob in his arms.  
  
"Screw Jake! I thought we did all of this!" Duo protested, pawing through the pile. "What's this?" He pulled out a slightly creased paper. "Pregnancy contengency? What the hell do we need this for?"  
  
"Cohabitation paperwork," Trowa explained, moving his pet up to his shoulder, where it purred and curled around his neck contentedly.  
  
Heero's eyes had narrowed at the first sight of the enormous pile of work; now they were mere slits of blue. "I'll take care of this," he said calmly, picking up a bag of water balloons and a can of whipped cream from the equipment that was scattered around the room. Then he exited the room.  
  
"Where do you think he's going?" Quatre asked, staring at the closed door.  
  
Duo shrugged. "Probably to kill someone."  
  
The lunch shook in terror, emitting an odd range of sounds for a gelatinous blob. Apparently, it had picked up a fear of Heero from somewhere.  
  
Wufei stared at it, realizing many minutes too late that he had been petting an unidentified living food-like substence. "Does Trowa know his thing is beeping?" He asked Duo, stepping away from the thing.  
  
The long-haired agent wasn't paying much attention. "Probably. Look at this!" He waved around some more forms. "Day Care premiums? Who needs Day Care in this day and age?!"  
  
There wasn't much anyone could say to that.  
  
***  
  
Heero cradled his Cream Bombs lovingly as he used the walls to brace himself, holding his position over the hallway before Lady Une's office carefully. Wedging yourself against the ceiling was harder than it looked, but it beat tackling the mountain of paperwork in his office.  
  
The former OZ Colonel came into view, coming down the hall to her office door and into target range. Heero readied himself. When she stepped directly below him, he dropped, beginning his attack.  
  
"Bonzai!!! OOWW!!!" As impossible as it seemed, Heero Yuy, the man of Gundanium, missed. Instead of landing on Une and smearing her with the Cream Bombs he had prepared, he landed with a painful-sounding "THUD", much like that of dead meat, three feet to her left. Even worse, he popped his balloons.  
  
The head of the Preventors turned to stare at her number one agent. "Heero, if you wanted a bigger office, all you had to do was ask." With that, she unlocked her office and stepped in, leaving Heero alone in the hallway with his whipped cream and bruises. Luckily, he wasn't alone for long.  
  
Noin rounded a corner and came into view, stopping in confusion when she saw the mess Heero was in the middle of. "Heero? What happened?"  
  
Heero crawled to his feet and tried to wipe off some of the whipped cream that was smeared on him. "Mission failure," he explained shortly.  
  
"Oh... Kay, if you say so." Noin shrugged. "I was just taking the company mascot over to your office. It's your week to keep him." She held up the rabbit in it's cage.  
  
Visions of Duo ignoring him in favor of the bunny filled Heero's head. "I'm over-joyed." He began to stagger back to his office, and the Duo within, while Noin followed. When he opened the door, she nearly dropped her rabbit.  
  
"Hey it's a puppy! And it looks... dead?" Her eyes filled up with tears as she stepped inside and let the door swing closed behind her. "The poor thing. Trowa, why do you have a dead puppy on your shoulder?"  
  
Trowa, calm, stoic Trowa, glared. "It's not a puppy. It's my lunch."  
  
The lunch, which had, indeed, taken a shape vaguely resembling a dog, burbled and sludged tighter to Trowa's neck, not liking the way the woman was looking at it's master.  
  
Wufei's eyes lit up at the sight of the bunny in Noin's arms. "Oh, it's a rabbit. Dinner! Get me my shot gun!"  
  
Lucrezia held the cage tighter. "Don't you dare, you pony-tailed Chinese freak."  
  
The Chinese agent glared. "Woman..." he growled, almost bristling, "We will have rabbit for dinner tonight."  
  
Heero and Duo watched curiously as the two combatants went toe to toe. Noin, for her part, matched Wufei glare for glare. "Call me 'woman' one more time and you'll be singing an octave higher."  
  
"Noin, stop threatening Wufei," Quatre chided, bending down to pet the rabbit through the cage. "Wufei, it can't be dinner. Look at it. It's so cute and fuzzy and... IT BIT ME!!" He pulled his slightly red, rabbit-chewed finger out of the cage and pouted. It really didn't hurt much, but it was the principle of the thing.  
  
"It can too be dinner!" Wufei argued, completely missing the part where Quatre was bitten. "As a lesser member of the food chain, nature dictates that we eat it!"  
  
At the same time Noin replied, "I'm not threatening. I'm *persuading*." Lucrezia set the rabbit cage down on one of the desks and gared at Quatre. "And don't you tell me what to do, or I'll tell your sisters that you're sleeping with Trowa AND Wufei!"  
  
The threesome in question dropped everything, including the lunch, which oozed over behind a potted plant to sulk. "How did you know that?" Wufei demanded.  
  
"Zechs told me, where else?" Noin crossed her arms smuggly. "Really, if you're going to screw around in secret, at least have the sense do it somewhere private."  
  
While Quatre and Wufei were busy blushing, Trowa was busy getting pissed. Without saying anything, he turned sharply and walked out the door.  
  
THUD  
  
It probably would have helped if the door was open.  
  
For a moment, Quatre was embarassed to be the sane one of the group. "I thought *I* was supposed to be the dumb blonde."  
  
Trowa's glob squished its way over to it's owner, dripping slime on his face worriedly. The former pilot Zero-Three blinked woozily and sat up, rubbing a lump on his forehead. "Oww... What hit me?" Absently, he gathered his lunch into the crook of his elbow, petting it soothingly.  
  
"The door," Heero told him gruffly, hauling him up by his non-occupied arm.  
  
Green eyes blinked and dialated. "You must be the fork," he said cheerily, staring at a point just over Heero's shoulder. Loosing his balance slightly, he caught sight of Duo. "And you're the knife. It's a pleasure to meet you. How's the baby?"  
  
His lunch beeped it's concern.  
  
"What? You don't know the story?" Trowa looked around at the room, eyes not quite focused. "The knife and fork had a baby. And they named it spoon. And the spoon ran away with the plate and they had a baby. And it's name was saucer." He grinned cheekily, more like a three year-old than a seventeen year-old former soldier. Then he giggled. That scared them more than the story had.  
  
"Maybe I should get him to the nurse's office," Noin offered, moving next to Trowa and patting him condescendingly on the arm.  
  
"We'll go with you," Quatre said immediately. "Right, Wufei?"  
  
Wufei blinked and glared at everyone in general. "Do I have to?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
The Chinese boy wilted. "Alright."  
  
"Has anyone seen the cheese grater?" Trowa asked, looking around the office. "I had it just a second ago..."  
  
Noin patted his arm again and pulled him gently towards the door while Wufei opened it for the currently-impaired young man. "Worry about that later. Come on now."  
  
Trowa pouted, an expression which looked incredibly odd on his usually composed face. The thing in his arms gurgled. "I'll do that and I'll be singing zippity-doo-dah the entire way." To emphasise this point, he hummed a few bars.  
  
Miss Lucrezia Noin twitched, then decided to ignore the comment. "Have I ever told you what Zechs' first words to me were?" she asked Quatre pleasantly.  
  
"No," Quatre answered, before Trowa could spout more innanities. "What were they?"  
  
She puffed out her chest and swaggered out into the hall, Trowa still on her arm. "'Cretz, I'm yo daddy!'"  
  
The door shut behind them, blocking out Trowa's girlishly disturbing laughter.  
  
Heero and Duo breathed a sigh of relief and turned to their pile of paperwork, ready to torch it, and then maybe try out the new lock on their office door.  
  
The door opened and Relena peeked in, clutching her fashionably oversized handbag and looking desperate.  
  
They both cursed under their breath.  
  
"Oh, Heero, Duo, I'm so glad I found you!" Relena rushed in and seated herself in one of the office chairs next to the bunny. "You wouldn't believe what just happened!"  
  
Duo flopped down in the only other chair available, sticking his tongue out at his lifemate and feigning suprise when Heero made himself comfortable on his lap. "Try us."  
  
Relena looked slightly pleased at their seating arrangements, but moved directly to her point anyway. "I passed Quatre, Wufei, Trowa and Noin in the hall, and-"  
  
Duo cut her off with a wave of his hand, the one that wasn't rubbing Heero's stomach. "Wait a minute, let me guess. Trowa said something wildly innapropriate for a woman who's virtue isn't up for sale?"  
  
Heero twisted around to stare at him.   
  
"How'd you guess?" Relena sounded shocked.  
  
"Experience," Duo answered shortly. "Let's leave it at that."  
  
"Did anything else happen to you?" Heero questioned, shifting around on Duo's lap and wriggling a little.  
  
The blonde girl fidgeted. "Well..." she hesitated. "They threatened to beat me with a bagette!!! And it wasn't even low-fat!" From there, she went onto ramble about an escaped squirel in the girls room, and how the supply room was supposedly haunted in her office. Eventually she had to stop for breath and noticed that neither member of her audience was paying any attention to her, being far to busy with each other. "Aren't you listening to me!?!? You never listen to me!"  
  
Duo managed to pull himself away from Heero's neck long enough to reply. "I do when you're not putting me to sleep."  
  
She sniffed. "Well, what about the ghost? Are you going to do anything about it?"  
  
Both boys raised raised an eyebrow apiece, and Heero snorted. "No. Is that it? You came in here for that?" Heero, needless to say, was rather annoyed at having his afternooner delayed.  
  
Once again, Relena shifted around in her seat nervously. "Not exactly..."  
  
"Then spit it out, woman!" Heero growled, completely unaware that he was channeling Wufei rather accurately.  
  
"It's nearly five o'clock!" Relena finally sputtered. "It's almost time to go home!"  
  
They both stared at her.  
  
"Well, just thought I'd let you know! Bye!" The Ambassador rushed out the door so quickly that she left her bag on the chair.  
  
Violet eyes tracked her exit. "That was weird. Shouldn't we run after her and give her back her pur... mmmm..." Duo didn't get to finish his thought as Heero reached down and kissed him, fingers already working at the buttons on his lover's shirt.  
  
On the office chair across from them, the purse emitted an odd whirring sound.  
  
***  
  
Relena stood on a desk in front of a large monitor. On the ground stood her booking agent Quatre, already counting the money they'd made so far. Quatre was a very happy person right now, since his commission was thirty percent and a free video. "Alright, girls! It's 16:37 and they're already naked. Pay up!"  
  
"I resent being called a girl," Wufei grumbled, but handed over twenty dollars all the same.  
  
Trowa, who now had a nicely purple bruise on his forehead and a nice set of memories he wanted to forget, collected ten dollars from his boyfriend.  
  
Une passed Quatre a fifty. "I thought Heero and Duo would have more control than that," she grumbled good naturedly. "They couldn't even go eight hours for God's sake..."  
  
"Quatre, how'd you end up on the rich side of the board?" Noin asked mournfully, giving him a twenty and a fifty from her and Zechs.  
  
"Just cuz I'm short doesn't mean I'm *stupid*," Quatre told her scornfully. "I did work with them during the war, you know, and they went at it like rabbits then too!"  
  
"Oh God!" Sally Po gasped, having already collected her winnings. "That poor rabbit's still in the room!"  
  
Everyone turned to look at the screen. "It's not that bad," Trowa soothed Sally. "It probably can't see anything through the pants on it's cage."  
  
"Like that makes it better!" she argued. A loud murmur of agreement started up around her, and one person suggested interupting Heero and Duo to retrieve the aparently abused animal.  
  
"Ladies, ladies," Relena called from her position on the desk. "Calm down!"  
  
Naturally, no one listened.  
  
The Ambassador stomped her foot. "Alright! Whoever shuts up gets a ten percent discount on their copy of the tape!"  
  
There was immediate silence. Relena smiled toothily, smelling money in the air like a shark smells blood in the water. "Good. Now who'd like a copy?" People crowded around her table, waving twenty dollar bills. Quatre climbed up beside her, pen working diligently as he copied down clients' names and their down payments, making note of who received the discount. Relena, for her part, was loudly extolling the beauty of the two specimens of manhood, captured on tape together and available for only twenty-five dollars per video.  
  
It was good to be rich.  
  
***OWARI***  
  
*05/30/03* 


End file.
